Introduction
In a recent study on the relations between incompetence and inflated self-assessment, Cornell psychologists Justin Kruger and David Dunning address a saying accredited to founding father Thomas Jefferson that "he who knows best best knows how little he knows". Whether or not Jefferson actually said this, the view of human knowledge here expressed can be traced back to Socrates (with whose teachings the learned Jefferson surely was acquainted). For it is Socrates who, defending himself during his famous trial before the people of Athens, claims that he is wiser than others precisely in that he "understands that his wisdom is worthless", meaning that he has the ability to know when he does not know something. The underlying idea here seems to be that human wisdom consists in some kind of meta-knowledge: In the ability to realize whether oneself, and possible others as well, has or does not have knowledge of a given subject matter.
Kruger's and Dunning's study approaches this ancient philosophical topic from an empirical point of view and with empirical methods of testing. What their studies are supposed to show is that, within certain domains of knowledge, only knowledge of the domain, and thus competence in it, can enable people to develop the metacognitive skills necessarily for an accurate assessment of their own and others' competence in the same domain. Kruger & Dunning hold that, with this result, their studies lend experimental support to Jefferson's saying. However, a more careful reflection on their thesis might reveal that it in fact challenges, rather than supports, at least part of the Socratic view of wisdom that Jefferson expressed.
Conceptual Clarifications
Kruger & Dunning suggest that in many social and intellectual domains people who are unskilled in those domains not only "reach erroneous conclusions" but are robbed by their very incompetence "of the metacognitive ability to realize it". Thus, paradoxically, only by making them competent in the domains in question can they gain the metacognitive competence to accurately tell whether they or others are competent in those domains. By "metacognitive competence" -- also known as "metacognition", "metamemory", "metacomprehension", and "self-monitoring skills" -- the authors simply mean "the ability to know how well one is performing, when one is likely to be accurate in judgment, and when one is likely to be in error".
Kruger & Dunning restrict their thesis to specific "social and intellectual domains" of competence. Indeed, they believe that the 'miscalibration' between performance and self-assessment so frequently observed especially in unskilled people can be shown to be rooted in their very lack of skill only for those domains in which competence is entirely dependent on knowledge about the domain. These domains include, according to the authors, logical reasoning, grammar, and also humor. In other domains, however, where competence does not fully depend on knowledge of the domain, unskilled people may be very well aware of their incompetence. For instance, most of us usually won't have problems realizing that we are not competent football players even if we have thorough knowledge of the rules and strategies of the game. In addition, in order to fall prey to our lack of metacognitive skills and overestimate ourselves in domains of the former type, we must satisfy a "minimum threshold of knowledge, theory, or experience" in said domain. For example, we won't probably dare to think of ourselves as competent in Chinese if we have never even studied the language.
Conclusion
Do Kruger & Dunning really support the Socratic view of wisdom? Remember that Socrates had basically claimed human wisdom consisted in not thinking that you know something when you do not know it. As Kruger & Dunning have shown, however, if you really do not know something but have engaged in it at least to some extent, and if your domain of competence is one in which skills depend on knowledge about the domain, then you are generally not psychologically able to display human wisdom in Socrates's sense. Thus, maybe Socrates was somewhat unfair to those of his interlocutors whom he blamed for thinking that they know even when they did not know it. ... Maybe human wisdom indeed is possible only in a very limited sense, and maybe Socrates was himself one of those who think too highly of themselves.
Sources:
Plato: Apology.
Justin Kruger and David Dunning: "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1999, vol. 77, pp. 1121-1134.
